


Five Stages

by strifechaos



Category: Crawl (2019)
Genre: Gen, Movie level depictions of violence, cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:02:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21833929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strifechaos/pseuds/strifechaos
Summary: Dave Keller's Five Stages of Accepting Help to Escape Alligators.orDave's POV on certain scenes from the movie.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Five Stages

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedibuttercup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/gifts).

> Disclaimer: Obviously Crawl isn't mine, I'm just playing with it a little.
> 
> In watching the movie I liked how the film portrayed the Kellers as having a hard time communicating/getting along sometimes but still loving one another and trying. I loved the flashbacks with Dave and Haley, how he was an integral part of her life growing up, and how their relationship impacted who she is today and how she faces her problems. How Beth's worry and concern for their dad was communicated in a single call to her sister. How Haley's reaction to her nephew Louie implies a loving if sometimes clashing relationship with her sister.
> 
> SO I had a lot of fun writing this, and I really hope my giftee enjoys it as well! Thanks for the awesome prompt! Merry Christmas!

**Denial and Isolation**

Dave Keller had just wanted to get his home settled for the storm.

A quick drive over from the place he’s staying at to ready the home he just couldn’t part with, board up some vents, turn off the utilities and pick up a few odds and ends that looters might take an interest in.

An hour tops.

He hadn’t even brought Sugar with him, leaving the old dog behind at his current place.

He planned on swinging back, locking up his current house as well and then taking a nice long weekend away from the hurricane. Figure out what jobs could be hurried along to make way for the work the hurricane would bring in.

The drive over isn’t easy, most of the traffic is headed in the opposite direction but the rain is coming down something fierce. The radio isn’t giving any good news about this Hurricane Wendy, instead of angling away its coming right up the south coast apparently. Goddamn he should have been a weatherman, wrong all the time and people never calling them on it. Shit he does one install a little wrong and owners are up his asshole in half a second, demanding he fix it and then pay them for the honor. Wrong fucking business.

When he rolls up to the old place, the neighbors are all outside packing up their trucks and vans, he gets out of the truck, dragging out his tools and radio. He sets up an old rock and roll station on his radio down in the crawl space, so he can keep an ear out for any breaking news on the storm; the weather guys are always chicken shit when it comes to anything other than a muggy, sunny day but the rock music will help him from wanting to smash his head against the bricks in frustration.

Storm media, more like looking to drum up grocery and gas sales he figures. All the same he gets to work on the vents in the crawl space, ready to get in and get out; a six-pack is calling his name as soon as he can find a good place to weather out the storm.

Under the house he runs across a dead opossum rotting away in the trap he’d forgotten about, he’ll try to empty it before he leaves but the rats scurrying around don’t bode well. He’ll need to put a few days in on the old house when the business with the storm settles. For now he tries to breathe shallowly and through his mouth, and to avoid getting bitten by any oversized rats.

The radio announcer interrupts the music to warn of the counties that are currently being evacuated of what routes to avoid, he needs to get to it before he won’t be able to pick up ol’ Sugar, and then Haley really would have hits nuts in a bind. Marley hadn’t been a big fan of the old mutt, but Dave and the kids had loved the scruffy thing. It doesn’t sit right with him, abandoning her to face the storm alone. Beth wouldn’t kick up too much of a fuss, knowing he wouldn’t do it on purpose but Haley would never let him live down ‘abandoning her in her time of need’.

And then, before he knows what’s happening, an odd breathy growl hisses out from behind him and he barely has a chance to look behind his shoulder at a monster of a gator that is charging right at him.

All he can think is that they shouldn’t have been able to get under here. The rain must have been really coming down, in the overflow has flooded and shepherded the bastard right into his crawlspace. Gators aren’t as quick out of the water as they are on land but it’s a damn sight quicker than people assume. The only thing saving him is a thrum of adrenaline induced panic, forcing his monkey brain into action; he’s scrambling back on his hands and feet, forty years of grit and dirt scratching at his palms. He backs up deeper into the crawl space, quick as his old bones will let him.

Dave’s close to the pipes, he's even managed to throw one leg over them it’s when he tries to angle his body through the gap that it all goes to shit. The gator rears up and surges forward faster than he can blink, all he sees from the corner of his eye are a pale maw filled with wicked sharp teeth, and then the gator is clamping down on him.

It feels like a percussion grenade has gone off on just shoulder. Dave screams out, thrashing wildly, hands rough from years as a contractor scrambling over the leather hide, scratching and pulling, looking for any give in the crushing force puncturing his shoulder. The pain is more than he can take, it's like a fucking house has collapsed on his shoulder. He has to get loose.

Uncaring of its prey’s devastating injury, the gator backs up with him in its grip, but is only able to get back so far. The way the gator clamped down on him has his leg jammed up in the pipes; Dave scrabbles at the brick overhead, trying to yank himself free.

The reptile isn’t having its prey escape; it shakes Dave, wrenching a piteous screech from the very bottom of his lungs, the gator’s merciless jerks at his flesh send scorching white pain careening down his nerves.

The teeth grind into his sinew and bone alike, slicing fresh waves of agony through him. He grabs onto the brick again, blood soaked hands scrambling for any hand hold to help keep him from being gator bait, to help pull his body behind the pipes.

The gator shakes him. Again and again. Simply whips its head from side to side, moving Dave like a fucking ragdoll. Its throaty growl echoes in Dave’s frantic mind, the stench of the reptile and the overwhelming pain.

And then in an out of body experience of his right leg bone just gives away with a thunder crack.

It’s unreal, the grisly white and red of his bone jutting out of his leg. The shock of the moment is his only saving grace. The gator releases him to get a better grip, and Dave, with the shock blanketing his pain, is able to marshal his body enough to scramble through the pipes.

The gator roars its displeasure and charges forward but no matter what angle it come at, it can’t manage to slip its bulk into the pitiful safe haven Dave’s found.

His victory is short lived however, as the pain surges up and clouds his mind he scrambles for something to apply to the bite, hands pressing down as hard as he can as blood gushes from the teeth punctures. Lights and darkness dance across his eyes, he’s never felt this type of agony, he needs a doctor, he needs surgery and blood to replace what’s gushing out of him and a fucking goddamn shotgun for that hell beast but before he can manage an escape plan or an SOS the pain and trauma cascade over his already beleaguered mind.

As his consciousness dips away he wishes he’d sold this house.

**Anger**

He thinks it has to be Beth at first.

Beth, his oldest, is always trying to take care of everyone in the family. She’s careful to remain neutral in all the family's fights though, easily frustrated with how naturally it comes to the rest of them to butt heads. Beth who calls every day to make sure he’s alright, to check in with whatever job he’s working on, to update him on Louie’s most recent baby accomplishment, to make sure he’s eating. She gets it from her mother. At least once a week Beth and Louie call on skype, because ‘Louie’ wants to see his grandpa.

Dave’s never accepted help with any amount of grace, Marley, his ex is a testament to that fact, but he’s always been weak against giving his girls what they want. Beth claws for his attention, sure that she’s missed out with how many hours he devoted to Haley’s swimming career while they grew up. He doesn’t think that’s true. He doesn’t like how that picture paints him, Haley had a gift that needed to be honed but he tried to spend time with both his girls, push them to be strong and live up to the potential. Sometimes they hadn’t agreed on what that potential was and where it ended, but they were Kellers and Kellers never give up.

His eyes don’t want to focus, so he thinks it can only be Beth shaking him awake. He’d forgotten to charge his phone last night, left it at his place with Sugar.

It can’t be Marley, she’s in Paris with that rich bastard, and Haley is still pissed about their fight. During their last explosion, his apex predator had told him he didn’t know her. That he should stop showing up at her meets, and most assuredly that he wasn’t her coach anymore.

He hadn’t taken those statements or barring from meets with any grace.

He’d made a comment about her being like her mother, running away from a problem instead of putting in the hard work to overcome it. Their fight had broken down from there, both more than a little sore and needing to lick their wounds. Marley has always said they were too alike, pushing at people with the self-awareness of a bull in a china shop. Which is fine in all, the hell he’s gonna listen to his ex-wife, but he hasn’t seen Haley in a month, both of them stewing over what the other said. So maybe Marley wasn’t as far from the mark as he’d like to think.

When his eyes and ears finally register that it’s not Beth but _Haley_ that has come to rescue him, he can’t believe it. That Haley would have left college to drive out in the middle of a storm. That she put herself at risk like that, it infuriates him and he more than welcomes the familiar feeling, anything that numbs some of the agony his injuries keep sending.

Haley is his baby girl, his apex predator. She is supposed to be miles and miles away from this hurricane, studying and taking notes. Swim practice is today. She should be in a pool, not a dusty crawl space with her busted up old man, hiding from a fucking gator.

He’d known, driving out to the old house that he wouldn’t have to worry about Beth or Louie; they’re so far up north that his biggest concern is what type of snowplow they need in the winter. His stubborn youngest is another story. Haley is still well within the occasional storm range but Dave had expected her to be in some group from the college, fleeing the area until the storm calmed down. Surely the University of Florida would arrange some sort of evacuation for its students; they pay that goddamn place enough in tuition every year, even with Haley’s swim scholarship.

But instead of driving her truck away from Hurricane Wendy, with a couple of the swim team members in tow, Haley is down here, covered in mud and spider webs, trying to save his stupid ass.

Dave blusters at her frantic worry, tries to tell her he doesn’t need her help, that she needs to get out of here. Haley wasn’t just an apex predator because she could swim like a demon though, she zeros in on weakness. It doesn’t get much weaker than being unconscious and bleeding under a fucking house. That she came across him passed out in the crawl space and had tried to drag him to safety means that she also blatantly scoffs as his denial of any need for her help.

His baby girl point blank refuses to leave him behind.

He wants to be angry, and he is, mad at her for ignoring him, not listening, not keeping herself safe. He’s so furious that she won’t just put herself first.

But he also doesn’t know how long he’s been down there for, the soil is damper from the rain now and he can’t hear the neighbors packing up their cars for evacuation. His wounds are no longer gushing blood but the pain shreds at his nerves with every breath, he can’t bear to look at his left leg, with the bone still jutting out, and he knows down to his marrow that if he doesn’t get out of here soon he won’t be getting out at all. So he wants to be mad but he’s so desperate for the pain to stop, to get the hell out of this house, for his daughter to actually talk to him again, he doesn’t stop her from helping.

It’s admirable and infuriating; the way Haley ignores his demands for her to just get to safety herself. In his mind, he’s the father here, **him**, that means it’s his job to make sure she gets out of here alive. Stubborn, as always, she soldiers on, taking each challenge as they come at her.

One apex predator trying to outsmart, outmaneuver the other, Haley versus the gator.

So Dave is beyond angry that she won’t prioritize herself but he’s also so goddamn thankful that he won’t be left behind. By either of his girls.

**Bargaining**

Dave tries to distract the gator from Haley; he yells and pounds the ground, searching for a tool to bang on the pipes, anything that will make a noise. Haley’s screaming and scrambling through the flooded crawlspace, the wailing storm outside muting everything else.

He calls out her name, over and over again but nothing. She doesn’t call back to him and it makes his gut clench with fear and doubt.

This can’t be the end, not for his baby. She’s supposed to be a swim champion, not be killed by a fucking lizard. He thrashes at the pipes, desperate to get the gator’s attention on him and away from his girl. He fixed his leg as best he could with what’s available underneath a house, the bone is realigned but it is throbbing and the ends are grinding with any vibration or movement. With every breath his shoulder, still a shredded mess, burbles a steady flow of blood. His frantic movements are degrading his focus, he’s starting to space out but if that alligator killed his daughter he’ll rip it to pieces with his bare fucking hands if it ‘s the last thing he does before this godforsaken storm drowns him.

He can’t give up though. Keller’s don’t give up.

He shouts and shouts for his daughter, his baby girl, trying to hear for any sound back.

The storm is kicking up outside, the winds whipping around and the rain pounding in a heavy cacophony, he can’t hear anything above his own pounding heartbeat and desperate voice, the echoing thuds of him slamming into the pipes.

He should have gone. He should never have sent her out there. God, if only he’d made her listen, made her stay back. It should be HIM. He’d give anything for it to be him.

Suddenly a scream pierces the air.

Dave’s gut freezes solid.

He rails against the pipe, starts screaming for Haley, anything he can do to confirm she’s still alive.

When her weak assurances reach him, that’s she _ok_, that she’s _alive_, the relief is a physical sensation. He’d give a lot to get out of this hellish situation but not his daughter.

**Depression**

Haley has to have reached the lake outside. She has to have made it, she’s an apex predator, nothing will stand in her way. Dave’s spent a good portion of his adult life coaching her to swim; she’s been blessed with a gift. An overflow pipe is nothing for her.

She’s coming.

He paddles up as best he can, gulping for air but he can’t lie to himself. It’s been hours and his energy’s been dwindling since the first attack, each attempt to escape and protect Haley has taken its toll. His shoulder is killing him and his leg is even worse, the wrench may be keeping it straight but the fractured ends keep grinding against one another, sending excruciating jolts of pain through his entire body.

By now, Halley’s swam out of the pipe and made it out of the lake, she has to have made it. He won’t accept any other outcome. He shouts for her. The rain keeps flooding in so all he can hear is the storm; winds whipping through the trees and water pounding down.

He screams again.

Calls out for Halley over and over, desperation making his voice shrill.

The water is closing in on his air supply, flowing down into the crawlspace faster and faster, no longer just a steady trickle. His primary concern isn’t gators now, no, now he’s worried about the remaining inches between the water and the floorboards. Dave takes deep gulping breaths, calling out for Haley when he has the air to spare.

Sugar whines from above, scratching at the floorboards weakly.

Dave pounds at the floorboards above his head in response, desperate to get out. He tries to call out again but there’s still no response from Halley; just Sugar’s whining and the raging storm.

The gators must have got Halley.

All he can think is that he sent his daughter to her death, that the gators must have been in the pipe, or waiting just outside it in the lake. And he sent his baby girl right to them in a desperate plea to save himself. It’s his fault.

The water laps against his face, it’s a struggle to stay above it, to stay awake, and he instinctively tries to suck in another breath but all he does is swallow water. More and more water.

His thoughts start getting hazy. He should have sold the damn house. He shouldn’t have held onto the past or let his fight with Haley kept him from going to her meets. He’s never gonna see her decimate her competition again. He’ll never see Beth again or Louie, and god he loves being a grandpa.

He can’t believe he sent Haley to her death; he wants to have switched places with her so bad his fucking gums are bleeding with it; if it meant a thousand gators ripping him to shreds it’d be fine as long as she made it out ok. He doesn’t care what happens to him, he just wants to save his baby girl. Let her have made it out.

He tries to pound against the floorboards but he doesn’t have the strength. The waters have met the floorboards and Haley hasn’t made it back to the house and his oxygen is all the way depleted.

He can’t breathe. He reaches for the floorboard but falls backward into the water.

And then it doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters.

Life fades further and further, until everything is a distant fuzzy, worry and then nothing more.

**Acceptance**

The strength it takes to haul Haley from the rain gutter to the roof is that last of his reserves. He’s sprawled out on the roof, unable to move and so goddamn thankful his girl is ok.

He hasn’t been fully able to concentrate on anything over the pounding headache and weakness in his ribs, a stark reminder that Haley had brought him back to life not twenty-minutes ago. That a fucking alligator snapped his arm like a toothpick and then ripped it his lower arm clean off his body.

His brain won’t process that he only had the one arm now. The impact that’ll have on his life is so immense that he’s ok with not processing it. He’s gotta focus on them surviving. Making sure Haley gets out of this alive.

He sees _his_ Haley standing on the roof of their home, fierce and determined, wielding a flare.

After hours and hours of fighting the pain of a broken leg, the soul deep panic when he woke up to Haley trapped under the house with him and their failed attempts at outmaneuvering the gators or getting the boat or driving off in the truck, it feels like a fever dream. That they’ve made it to the roof in time for a passing rescue copter to spot Haley’s flare can’t be considered anything but a miracle.

“We did it, daddy, we made it.”

“Apex predators, baby, all day.”

**END.**


End file.
